I'm the Cook

Time to lighten up.

Part of the way we divvy the chores is that I usually do the grocery shopping, after a little consultative menu planning some of the time. Whoever cooks doesn't have to do the dishes. We pretty much split breakfast duties on the mornings we don't go to the gym. Those days the starter is sharing a banana and having a latte (at home--we have this great machine).

Dinner is mostly mine to do, but on weekends she has started doing slow cook dishes, and training me to eat leftovers for those nights when we have been a little busy.

I'm a fairly decent cook. Not a great one. I'm a recipe cook and what I think is being a really good cook is the ability the create something good without a recipe, preferably from found ingredients. But we do cook. We don't use packaged foods with a couple of exceptions. We also don't have a microwave. The new house didn't have one installed and we decided to try doing without. Works just fine. Takes a little planning to thaw things from the freezer, and we have a couple of different vegetable steamers.

With help I do most of the company cooking. She will set up a salad or hors d'oeuvres and sometimes do some baking for a dessert. She makes a great pie crust.

For Christmas we used a cookbook put together by a local restaurant owner/chef, "Tom Douglas' Big Dinners." The meal featured eggs poached in wine, roast duck, mushroom and rustic bread stuffing, apple & radicchio salad with maple molasses pecans, finishing with a persimmon pudding with Calvados hard sauce and pear sauce, garnished with sugared cranberries and mint leaves. Douglas did a great job of spelling out what could be done ahead so the effort was spread over 3 days. It turned out great.

Oddly what made me feel best was something I invented this week. I was in the store and saw golden beets and it occurred to me I could roast them. Then I wondered what could go with them. The dish I ended up with was a roasted beets and fennel bulb salad garnished with sauteed pine nuts and crumbled pancetta. I actually invented something I hadn't ever had or seen a recipe for, It's quite good. You dice the beets and fennel, put them in a roasting pan--I used a glass one--toss them with olive oil--I use the light version that can take more heat--add some salt and pepper and roast at 450 for 45 minutes or so, stirring about halfway through. Sprinkle with a dash of white wine vinegar before serving.

If your timing is off you can just turn the oven off after 45 minutes and the dish will hold.

Made me feel like a "real" cook.